ON THE FLYERS: Meszaros' road back a long and winding one

VOORHEES, N.J. — The wry, half-sheepish grin Andrej Meszaros adopted as he walked back into the Skate Zone locker room Thursday seemed almost appropriate. There simply have been too many of these “So, you do you feel?” kind of pop quizzes for him for too long a period of time now.

Yet it’s been less than two years since Meszaros, with a better-than average shot and an instinctual grasp of where to put the puck finished up his first Flyers season with so much promise. Though the Flyers club that the year before had made a run to the Stanley Cup Finals was on the verge of great change, with franchise building blocks Mike Richards and Jeff Carter both ticketed to leave, Meszaros settled in as the winner of that year’s Barry Ashbee Trophy as the team’s best defenseman, and seemingly had his best years ahead of him.

Since then, the injuries have piled up and Meszaros’ blooming talents have gained a rusty edge.

“It’s definitely frustrating,” the Flyers’ 27-year-old injured list stalwart said. “During the lockout, I wanted to play in Europe ... but it didn’t happen. So the focus was get healthy and try to start the season on time, which I did. So it was good for me to play, and then after four games, this happens. Bad luck, I guess.”

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“This” is a left shoulder injury that, hopefully, is healing. Meszaros was able to skate with his team, albeit for only a short time, at practice Thursday. But he guess-timates he’s still “a few weeks” away from a return, which in a 48-game season is a pretty significant period of recovery.

Then again, Meszaros should be getting used to it.

After early career stints in Ottawa and Tampa Bay, he had seemed to find himself as a solid two-way defender with a real upshot on the power play. But after that first, fabulous Flyers season, Meszaros suffered a wrist injury during the 2011 offseason. So he started slow, but managed to squeeze in 62 games last season before a back injury sent him down. He underwent surgery in March for removal of a disc fragment, returning only in time for the last game of a conference semifinals playoff series loss to New Jersey.

Meszaros began rehabiliating last summer, but in August, he injured his Achilles’ tendon while working out, another injury requiring surgery. Only a lockout prevented him from missing another few months of games, and as it was, he seemed uncertain whether he was ready when the season finally did begin Jan. 19. But Meszaros went in ... and 10 days later went out during a game against the Rangers with the shoulder injury.

His frequent absences have been felt acutely by a team that over the past two seasons has tried to improve its blue line in the wake of a likely career-ending concussion for Chris Pronger, but simply hasn’t been able to do enough in that effort.

At least Meszaros is still grinning over it all. But hey, how does he feel?

“Tough to say,” Meszaros managed to say. “I’m feeling better. I’m progressing, but obviously I’m not where I want to be yet. We’ll see how it goes the next few weeks. ... After the (current road) trip, maybe we’ll see how it is and we’ll go from there. I can’t really tell, exactly, but I’m doing better than I was.”

That said, Meszaros knows any player incurring a string of injuries like he’s had tends to fall victim to that haunting label of “injury prone player.” He doesn’t want that, nor does he particularly like the idea of returning early from this or any other injury.

But he knows he’s nowhere near ready to return. That showed up when shooting the puck during practice Thursday, with Meszaros explaining, “Just easy shots, and not far away.

“I’m going to know what I can do (when I try) slapshots and stuff like that,” he said, “but it’s not just the shot. I can feel pretty good about the shot but I’d still have to do some battle drills along the boards. So we’ll see when that’s going to be.

“The first two days it was tough for me to move. Now it’s rehabbing every day and trying to strengthen my shoulder. But who knows? One day I can feel better and one day it depends on what I did the day before. So we’re going one day at a time.”